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Family Squabble

Earlier this week, I went kayaking for a couple of days in the little town of Crystal River, Florida, on the Gulf coast north of Tampa.

Crystal River is on King’s Bay, which is fed by freshwater springs bubbling up from the Florida Aquifer. In winter, water from the springs is warmer than Gulf water, so herds of West Indian manatees congregate in King’s Bay to stay warm.

My first trip to Crystal River was in 2012, and I wrote a two-part post about the experience on this blog.

This latest trip, however, was for paddling, not swimming with the manatees. King’s Bay is clean, scenic, and relatively small. This time, I wanted to explore.

And I did. The days were sunny, calm, and 75 degrees. I took my time and covered most of the in-town sections of the bay. At night, I sought out seafood restaurants. Then I retired to my motel to recover for the next day.

How was the trip? Terrific. But my most vivid memory was not the kayaking, not the scenery, not the fried shrimp, but a monumental domestic dispute that unfolded in front of me in the parking lot of a local grocery store.

Early Monday morning, I stopped at the local Sweetbay Supermarket to buy a wrapped sandwich for lunch on the water.

As I exited the store, the man walking ahead of me, a fellow gray-hair, lost his grip on a bag of groceries. Half a dozen things spilled out onto the pavement. I paused to help the man collect his stuff.

As the two of us gathered the items, we heard the roar of a car engine. I looked up to see a dilapidated sedan approaching at a speed far too high for a grocery store parking lot.

As I was wondering whether I would need to dive out of the way, the car swerved and screeched to a halt nearby. A large, 50-ish white woman leaned out of the driver’s window and yelled, “Dammit, I know what you’re doing!”

She was addressing a man, also 50-ish and white, sitting on a bench in front of the store.